Hilal Isler

writer

Contact

I’m a Turkish American writer in the Twin Cities

Cap college graduation mortar board school university, Handd

Education

I’ve earned Bachelor’s & Master’s degrees in Molecular Biology & Genetics

from UMCP

My doctorate is from UPenn. The dissertation I wrote was on the American children of immigrants.I graduated with honors.

McKnight

I’m proud to be a 2023-2024 McKnight Fellow in Creative Prose. Alexander Chee was the judge.

Best Small Fictions

Thrilled to have my short story, Scorpion, included in the Best Small Fictions, 2023 anthology.

You can read it here.

I’ve been writing for fun almost as long as I can remember. But it wasn’t until grad school — when my boyfriend suggested I contribute to the Daily Pennsylvanian — that I published for the first time.

After graduation came many years of freelancing. At first it was concert & album reviews.

Back then, I mostly wrote about Asian American, & British Asian artists for Rolling Stone India...

King Khan

Here

Sub Swara

Here

Big Sleep

Here

...before branching out, considering art & culture more generally for the Guardian, Elle, & Vogue Turkiye, Condé Nast Traveler, & O, the Oprah magazine.

Eventually, in 2015, I started a blog, surprised to amass thousands of “followers” simply by writing about my life.

I talked about my parents, my girlhood, and my chakras; about working in a restaurant, & nearly getting expelled from a Saudi Arabian high school for starting an underground yearbook.